Season 3, Episode 9 of the Folklife Today Podcast is ready for listening! Find it on the Library’s website, or on Stitcher, iTunes, or your usual podcatcher. In this episode John Fenn and I, along with guests Nicole Saylor and Jennifer Cutting, look at songs on summer themes. The podcast includes Appalachian, African American, French Canadian, Finnish, Tuvan, and Irish songs. As usual, I present links to relevant blog posts, videos, and audio selections in this post.
We're excited for this week’s Homegrown concert from Hubby Jenkins, who will be playing old-time songs and spirituals that are the root of American folk, country, blues, and gospel. The concert premieres at noon on August 11 on our Facebook page. After that, the concert will be available permanently at his concert page, where you can also read more about Hubby. For now, I’ll just say that he's an old-time and blues musician living in New York. He's a singer and multi-instrumentalist who plays guitars, banjos, mandolins, and bones. He has been a member of the Rhiannon Giddens Band, and before that the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops. As a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, he played at the Library of Congress back in 2012. In this post, I’ll try to whet your appetites by talking about a few of the songs Hubby plays in the concert, and presenting related field recordings from our collections.
Season 3, Episode 8 of the Folklife Today Podcast is ready for listening! Find it at the link from this post to the Library’s website, or on Stitcher, iTunes, or your usual podcatcher. In this episode John Fenn and I, along with guests Langston Collin Wilkins and Sophie Abramowitz, look at Langston Hughes as a “Hidden Folklorist.” As usual, I'll present links to the relevant blog posts and audio selections in this post!
We’re very excited for this week’s Homegrown double-header of concerts from the duo of Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin, followed by Martin Carthy. You can read about the musicians over at the concert pages (Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin’s is at this link, and Martin Carthy’s at this link). For now, I’ll just say that …
The January 1941 launch of the Radio Research Project marked the initial foray of the Library of Congress into broadcast media. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and supported by Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish, the project created numerous and diverse radio programs primarily relating to American history and folklore, and utilized groundbreaking recording and production …
Back near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we suggested a new challenge to keep folks busy while waiting out the worst at home. The idea was a variation on our popular "Archive Challenge," in which you base a work of art on an item in our archive. This post suggests ideas for archive challenges that might appeal to active-duty service members and veterans, and sets up a future post about Veterans History Project collections.
Every day next week, March 15-21, at noon Eastern time, you can listen to, and sing along with, a respected musician performing a song from the American Folklife Center archive at the Library of Congress. That's because next week, the American Folklife Center is working with the Daily Antidote of Song, a daily online concert and singalong in which diverse singers lead a single song each day at noon Eastern time. Next week, starting March 15, all the singers will be performing songs they learned from the AFC archive! AFC staff members Stephen Winick and Jennifer Cutting will be there to co-host each day's Antidote as well. Gallery of images featuring Dom Flemons, Low Lily, Hubby Jenkins, Kumera Zekarias, Steve Winick & Jennifer Cutting, Kevin Elam, and Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer. March 15: Jennifer Cutting & Steve Winick/ March 16: Low Lily/ March 17: Kevin Elam/ March 18: Dom Flemons/ March 19: Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer/ March 20: Hubby Jenkins/ March 21: Kumera Zekarias
We couldn't help notice that sea shanties have been getting a lot of attention lately. The American Folklife Center has one of the greatest collections of sea shanty field recordings in the world. This blog post provides an introduction to sea shanties, including links to audio, video, and texts of many songs in the American Folklife Center's collections. It's lavishly illustrated with photos and artwork depicting ships, sailors, and singing. It covers the history of shantying and the different kinds of shanties for different tasks, and emphasizes the African American and Afro-Caribbean contributions to shanties. It also provides a link to our new podcast on sea shanties. There are even guest appearances by Bruce Springsteen and Thomas Hampson. Don't miss it!
